Microsoft may be last place in Japan, but it has no intentions of throwing in the towel

Peter Moore of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices
Division believes in Xbox so much, that he’s tattooed his biceps with Halo 2
and Grand Theft Auto IV for the sake of game announcement events. Speaking with
IGN, Moore
touches upon several topics surrounding the console.

A popular thing to poll the execs on is their thoughts about
Nintendo Wii. Moore doesn’t buck the trend and has nice things to say: “The
innovation that the Wii is, I'm certainly a big fan of. It ties in exactly with
what Nintendo needs to do. And it ties directly into their strong intellectual
property that is more youth oriented and more family oriented.”

The industry may be envious of the Wii’s popularity
with the non-gamer market, but Moore says that he has nothing to envy about Sony’s
current offering. “The PS3, I really don't know what I would look at there that
we're really missing,” said Moore, while pointing out that he’s very confident
in Xbox 360’s software portfolio and Xbox Live service. “The online service,
[Sony's] still trying to get it up to speed and there's nothing really there
that I can really point to that I wish we had. You know, certainly the price
point of the PS3 isn't something that I want to emulate.”

Microsoft is enjoying Xbox solid success most of its
territories, and Moore is not anticipating any change in leadership a year from
now. “Obviously we have the intent to grow the lead we have. The attach rate is
very important as well and making sure people are buying lots of games for
their console. The rate of 5.1 here in America is very, very healthy,” he said “I
think if we sat here a year from now we'd be able to say, we took advantage of
the critical mass we got, there are more games being made than ever for the
Xbox 360.”

While the Xbox 360 gaining ground in the western world, the
console isn’t putting a dent into the Japanese market. When asked if Microsoft
needs to rethink its strategy in the Japanese market, Moore replied, “No, I
think we need to compete in Japan [now]. I think there's a tremendous amount of
benefits, both direct and indirect, of being a good partner … There are a
myriad of different things that provide benefits for us for being a competitor
in the Japanese videogame market and that's something we'll continue to do.”
Although the installed user base of the Xbox 360 has already been surpassed by
the Wii and PS3, Moore says that Microsoft has no intention of conceding
defeat. “It's not easy, let me make that clear. It's not easy. But we're not
going to back down just because it's not easy.”

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